Chamorro Chamoru
Spoken in:	Guam, Northern Mariana Islands
Region:	Western Pacific Ocean
Total speakers:	First language: more than 60,000
Language family:	Austronesian  Malayo-Polynesian (MP)   Nuclear MP    Sunda-Sulawesi     Chamorro
Official status
Official language in:	Guam, Northern Mariana Islands
Regulated by:	no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	ch
ISO 639-2:	cha
ISO 639-3:	cha
Chamorro language spread in the United States
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Guam ( Chamorro: cha Guåhån) officially the Territory of Guam, is an island in the western Pacific Ocean and is an organized unincorporated The Northern Mariana Islands, officially the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI is a commonwealth in Political union with the United The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth 's Oceanic divisions List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 351 million speakers The Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages are a branch of the Austronesian family that are thought to have dispersed from a possible homeland in Sulawesi. The Sunda-Sulawesi languages (or Inner Hesperonesian or Inner Western Malayo-Polynesian languages) are a branch of the Austronesian family posited Guam ( Chamorro: cha Guåhån) officially the Territory of Guam, is an island in the western Pacific Ocean and is an organized unincorporated The Northern Mariana Islands, officially the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI is a commonwealth in Political union with the United This is a list of bodies that regulate Standard languages Natural languages Auxiliary languages Interlingua The auxiliary language ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages ISO 639 -3 (ISO 639-32007 is an international standard for Language codes The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's

Chamorro (Chamoru) is the native language of the Chamorro or Chamoru of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. "Chamoru" redirects here For the language see Chamorro language. The Northern Mariana Islands, officially the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI is a commonwealth in Political union with the United Guam ( Chamorro: cha Guåhån) officially the Territory of Guam, is an island in the western Pacific Ocean and is an organized unincorporated It is also used in the mainland United States by immigrants and some of their descendants. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the

It is an agglutinative language, grammatically allowing root words to be modified by an unlimited number of affixes. An agglutinative language is a Language that uses Agglutination extensively most Words are formed by joining Morphemes together An affix is a Morpheme that is attached to a stem to form a word For example, manmasanganenñaihon "(plural) talked awhile (with/to)" from pluralizing prefix man-, past tensifying prefix ma-, root verb sangan, suffix i "to" (forced morphophonemically to change to e) with excrescent consonant n, and suffix ñaihon "a short amount of time". Morphophonology (also morphophonemics, morphonology) is a branch of Linguistics which studies The phonological structure Thus "In manmasanganenñaihon gui' ": "We (exclusive) talked to him/her for a bit".

Chamorro has many Spanish loanwords and others have Spanish etymological roots (e. g. tenda "shop/store" from Spanish tienda), which may lead some to mistakenly conclude that the language is a Spanish Creole: Chamorro very much uses its loan words in a Micronesian way (eg: bumobola "playing ball" from bola "ball, play ball" with verbalizing infix -um- and reduplication of first syllable of root). A number of Creole languages are based on the Spanish language. BALL ( Biochemical Algorithms Library) is a C++ library containing common algorithms used in Biochemistry and Bioinformatics. An infix is an Affix inserted inside a stem (an existing word Reduplication, in Linguistics, is a morphological Process by which the root or stem of a Word, or part of it is repeated

The numbers of Chamorro speakers have declined in recent years, and the younger generations are less likely to know the language. The influence of English has caused the language to become endangered. Various representatives from Guam have unsuccessfully lobbied the United States to take action to promote and protect the language. In Guam (called "Guåhan" by Chamorro speakers, from the word guaha, meaning "have"), the number of native Chamorro speakers have dwindled in numbers in the last decade or so while in the Northern Mariana Islands, young Chamorros still speak the language fluently.

There are approximately 50,000 to 75,000 speakers of Chamorro throughout the Marianas archipelago. The Mariana Islands (also the Marianas; up to the early 20th century sometimes called Ladrones Islands, from Spanish Islas de los Ladrones meaning It is still common among Chamorro households in the Northern Marianas, but fluency has greatly decreased among Guamanian Chamorros during the years of American rule in favor of (a largely pidginized) American English, which is commonplace throughout the inhabited Marianas. A pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common in situations such as Trade English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States

Alphabet

' (glottal stop), A, Å, B, Ch, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, Ñ, Ng, O, P, R, S, T, U, Y

Note that the letter Y is pronounced more like 'dz' (an approximation of the regional Spanish pronunciation of "Y"/"Ll" as "(d)ʒ", the exact sound of which did not exist among the Chamoru); nor are N and Ñ always distinguished. This article is about the sound in spoken language For the letter see Glottal stop (letter. The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is a (eɪ plural The letter Å represents various sounds in the Swedish, Finnish (although no native Finnish words contain the letter å Danish, Norwegian B is the second letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled bee or occasionally be (biː plural bees. D is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled dee or occasionally de (diː E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled e (iː plural es or ees (also written E's E F is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ef or eff (ɛf G is the seventh letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled gee or occasionally ge (dʒiː I is the ninth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its English name is i (aɪ K is the eleventh letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled kay (keɪ L is the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is el or occasionally ell (ɛl M is the thirteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled em (ɛm N is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled en (ɛn Ñ (lower case ñ) is a letter of the modern Roman alphabet formed by an N with a diacritical Tilde. Ng (lowercase ng) is a digraph of the Latin alphabet. In English and several other European and English-derived orthographies it O is the fifteenth letter of the modern Latin Alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o (oʊ plural usually o's or os; sometimes P is the sixteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled pee or occasionally pe (piː R is the eighteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ar (ɑr pronounced or) S is the nineteenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ess or occasionally es (ɛs generally es- T is the twentieth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled tee or occasionally te (tiː U is the twenty-first letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u (juː The letter Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Ezh ( Ʒ ʒ) is a letter in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA representing the Voiced postalveolar fricative consonant Thus the Guamanian place name spelled Yona is pronounced 'dzo-nia', not 'yo-na' as might be expected. Yona ( pronounced /d͡zoˈnia/ not joˈna/ is a village on the east coast of Guam. Note also that Ch is usually pronounced like 'ts' rather than 'tsh' and that A and Å are not always distinguished in written Chamorro (often being written simply as 'A'). “R” in Chamorro is pronounced like [ɾ] like Spanish and Chamorro also has a trill [r] which is spelled “RR”.

Chamorro basic phrases

These Spanish introduced pharases are innacurate. Chamorros don't actually have any phrases for goodbye or whatever. They use substitutes.

Numbers

Current common Chamorro uses only number words of Spanish origin: unu, dos, tres, etc. Old Chamorro used different number words based on categories: "Basic numbers" (for date, time, etc), "living things", "inanimate things", and "long objects".

• The number 10 and its multiples up to 90 are: dies(10), benti(20), trenta(30), kuårenta(40), singkuenta(50), sisenta(60), sitenta(70), ochenta(80), nubenta(90)

References

• Aguon, K. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States B. (1995). Chamorro: a complete course of study. Agana, Guam: K. B. Aguon.
• Topping, Donald M. (1973). Chamorro reference grammar. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. The University of Hawaii Press is a University press that is part of the University of Hawai{{okina}}i.
• Topping, Donald M. , Pedro M. Ogo, and Bernadita C. Dungca (1975). Chamorro-English dictionary. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. The University of Hawaii Press is a University press that is part of the University of Hawai{{okina}}i.
• Topping, Donald M. (1980). Spoken Chamorro: with grammatical notes and glossary, rev. ed. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. The University of Hawaii Press is a University press that is part of the University of Hawai{{okina}}i.

External links

• Chamorro language at Ethnologue
• http://ns.gov.gu/language.html
• http://www.offisland.com/thelanguage.html
• http://www.chamorro.com/fino/fino.html
• http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Chamorro-english/
• Chamorro Wordlist at the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database